Thing 44: The Economy

As the economy has tanked, I feel quite fortunate to have had parents who have taught be about saving, how money works and so on. Also helps that I was raised by parents who were raised by parents who lived through the Depression and have no trouble reusing plastic bags. I knew husband had great potential beyond boyfriend status when one of our first dates I handed him the Happenings book and said "I don't care what we do tonight, but it's got to come out of the book." He laughed with me and many of our future date destinations were from this coupon book.

What's interesting to me is the push back schools are now getting on providing economic education. Certainly its important, but as classes like FACS (a place certainly appropriate for home economics education (saving, budgeting, etc.) become less available because of required courses, where do we squeeze in this info. Students take economics in 9th grade, but will they remember all that they need when it comes time to saying "no" to credit card offers in college? Perhaps, as with many things, this type of education is best done at home with some reinforcing at school. This websites provided in this thing are great for that. I can see making things like the Lee LeFavor video available, having a brief discussion in class and then having a homework assignment in Moodle. The types of economic exploratory activities here go way beyond the classic stock game and certainly would have more impact on students.

What are your cost saving tips?

This summer, we've spent some time on Craig'slist looking for items for the house and for many of our needs, we don't need to have new things. Husband and I are both ok with gently used. For us as we look at the costs of some things, it's an easy choice. My pal Bonnie is also a fantastic garage saler. She's on the hunt for us as well. Regarding other tips, I love coupons, should print off more than we do, try to plan meals around the Sunday grocery ads, Husband bikes to work at least three days a week, so on and so forth. Most of these tips are things we've been doing forever and so when the recession hit, we didn't have to make too many changes in our lifestyle, these things were already a habit. A new habit we hope to acquire in the new house is baking our own bread!

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

When I've missed an episode of a TV show I like, I will take time to track it down and watch it online. Watching online, I find that I don't pay as close attention as I do when it's on the box in the living room. I'm distracted by checking email or looking at FB updates. The quality is not as great, but that's not what I'm after. Mostly, I want to make sure I'm up-to-date on the story line. I do like that you can watch a missed episode in less time than on regular TV (though I can speed up time with our TIVO as well).

I've had fun exploring shows on Hulu and looking at new movie trailers at Apple.

Right now having access to free TV content hasn't changed my viewing habits much. I still like to be comfy on the couch when watching TV (though I know we could get a server for the TV and set that up, etc. etc.) and sometimes I like to watch Gray's Anatomy at the same time everyone else is so that friends and I can call during the commercials. Will free access change things? Sure, we've already seen that with the writers strike and their demands for payment when things go online. How to license creative content and pay everyone fairly is a hot topic! No longer is the guilty warning on the bottom of sheet music not to "reproduce because it negatively impacts the livelihood of the artist" enough.

Thing 42: Music 2.0

Friend Eric introduced me to Radioio a couple of years ago and I liked listening to that when I was working late. No longer did I have to lug around cds, there was a website that had a variety of music formats and I could listen to whatever I wanted. If I were willing to pay a fee, I wouldn't even have to listen to the commercials. Lately it seems that connectivity to this site hasn't been great, so as I have been packing up the house this week I've been listening to The Current via the computer. (We no longer have a stereo or boombox, all is packed away). With the advent of the Ipod and podcasts, I've been able to keep up with favorite radio shows that I sometimes miss and that certainly is a boon! For example, we downloaded a whole bunch of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me episodes to listen to in the car when driving to Chicago. If you haven't heard the recent episode where Paula Dean is interviewed, grant yourself this 7 minute pleasure. It's a hoot!

So will internet radio replace broadcast? I don't think so. It seems like the radio stations figured out the importance of the internet connection to their work before the TV stations did. In order to stay in business, they must stay relevant. They do that by having up-to-date content, making their original content available via the air waves as well as the internet and by hiring fantastic on air talent. Doesn't matter how good the news reporting is on NPR, if the on air talent isn't any good, no one is going to listen. Plus at this moment, the radio stations do have the advantage of a poor economy on their side . . . HD radio is a luxury for many people and in these times, it might one thing to forgo. Remember when new cars came with Sirius radio connections? They were fabulous, but how many people continued the subscriptions?

Thing 41: Mash Up Your Life

Ja, so our life is pretty much mashed up at the moment. Contents of one house locked away in a storage locker. Half the contents of the other house in storage at my parents house, quarter of the remaining contents packed up in boxes around the house leaving a quarter of things to get us through the next three weeks until we close on the new house.

My frustration with 23 Things is the constant registering for web services, many of which we may never use again. (I get that you don't know until you try, but at this stage I may be getting web service fatigue). Thing 41 wants us to register for yet another thing and quite honestly, I'm very happy with my Igoogle page and Tweet deck for keep tracking things. All the gadgets I have added to those pages do fine by me. So to answer the prompt do these services make life easier, some yes and are they productivity boosters? Yes and no, I like having only one place to check for blog, tweet and FB updates. Am I spending more time on FB this summer than last? Yep. Is that productive? Not so much. :-)

Thing 40: Mashup on the Web

Hmm, so first off I looked at Visual Headlines and found the site hard to use because it wasn't immediately clear where to click. After clicking on "Top Stories" the site loaded a banner of pictures to accompany the story "Family Doctors Are an Endagered Breed." The pictures on the banner don't necessarily relate. They were:

• A group of people seemingly standing in a line of sorts
• A man with with his hair pulled back in a pony tail and a pierced left ear
• People welcoming Hillary Clinton to India
  
• A lion
• A beagle on a couch

With each refresh, the pictures change. What is the reader to intuit about the connection between the photos and the headline? Are pony tailed men who also pierce their ears in danger of extinction? Is Hillary Clinton attending medical school while in India? Lions may be endangered, but certainly not a beagle, though beagles are an acceptable family pet. Uffda! All this means to me is that there is even more need to teach visiual and media literacy to students!

OK, now that I have ranted, I went back and looked at the site again. Each one of these pictures was to represent a word in the headline. Blech! Really, the people in India warrant an "an"? I understand the cuteness of what the site is trying to do, however, writing a computer code to match up pictures and words . . . without context . . . all under the banner of news seems irresponsible. Walter Cronkite would not call this journalism!

Also played with booktour.com. Helpful site in looking to see what authors are coming to town, the search feature could use a little work, but certainly could use this site as a starting point. Lazy Library won't work as a site for EHS students . . . outside reading books must be atleast 250 pages in length. (And when did reading short books be come something to celebrate rather than reading something that interests you?? Example--Marley and Me is a book that nearly everyone who picks it up just loves. Doesn't make this list because it is too many pages in length, 320 in paperback )

For this entry assignment, I made a first day of school outfit on Polyvore.

How To Use Polyvore by sarswenson featuring Fendi shoes

(Don't know why I'm getting those "drop and drag" labels. They don't appear at the Polyvore site.)

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

Looking at the Mark Twain lesson plan idea, I can see something like that being done in our building. What it would require is some more direct instruction on powerpoint and a shift in how teachers use the computer lab. I think we could pull off something like that and it helps that the lesson plan comes from a trusted resource like NCTE. The digital storytelling would be a 21st century improvement on the poster, because not only would it incorporate technology skills, it would be yet another chance to work with students locating materials and crediting sources.

Inspired by my friend Barb who was in a scrapbooking phase, I created a scrapblog account a couple of years ago. As I type this blog entry today, I am waiting for Scrapblog to send me my password so I can play around with it some more. (Obviously I didn't do much with it then). I can see having a student worker use this program to put together some fun online displays for the library, but overall I like "Shelfari" for these kinds of things. (It's been a bit and still no response from scrapblog . . . I'm moving ahead.)

Thing 38: Screencasting

Inspired by my fellow high school librarians, I explored Jing this past spring and consequently created a series of Jing videos, one for each of the subscription databases for our school. They are posted at the school website. There was a trial and error period in learning to use Jing, most frustrating was the headset that wouldn't work consistently. Overall, though it was an easy to use product and I'm pleased that we have these quick tutorials for students.

My Jing resume also includes a video done for the district, providing instruction on accessing our new online card catalog. I've also talked with a couple of teachers about putting lectures on their Edline pages using Jing . . . MW, I think we've both tried to get people jazzed about the idea, though with mixed results, the sawhorse in the road being not enought time.